1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a power control circuit for a device such as a battery operated computer.
2. Discussion of the Background
A power control system for a device such as a battery operated computer, such as a laptop or notebook computer, operates to ensure that the appropriate computer components have power supplied thereto to be turned on based on the operation mode of the computer. For example, the computer may operate in several modes such as a doze mode, sleep mode, suspend mode, a fully-on mode and a fully-off mode. During these different modes, different components in the computer should be turned on and have power supplied thereto.
In a conventional computer power supply system, each of the specific components which are to have power supplied thereto based on the operation mode of the computer will be powered on at the same time. For example, in the fully-on mode, each of the computer components will have power supplied thereto at the same time.
However, such conventional power control systems suffer from significant drawbacks. First, by turning on each of the computer components which are to have power supplied thereto at the same time, power surges may be generated, which may limit battery life or damage the battery. Furthermore, in such a conventional power control system, certain components may be temporarily incorrectly biased particularly in power-on, power-off and power-state transition situations, causing damage to these components. Further, in such conventional power control systems, battery life is reduced as certain components may have power supplied thereto prior to the actual time required for them being turned on.